


Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

by Dissenter



Series: Cry havoc [4]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Explosions, Guerrilla Warfare, Historical, Historical References, Period-Typical Sexism, Political upheaval, War, Women In Power, World War II, bamf Daniela
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 23:36:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12119745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: Victory in war, Daniela is quickly finding, depends almost entirely on what you are willing to sacrifice.





	Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Night-Mare (Aoife)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoife/gifts).



> I now have basic character sheets for all of Daniela's guardians, and a fair number of her contemporary Dons. I also have vague plans for at least two more of these fics. This series is officially out of my control, and I keep having to stop and do research.  
> Oh well, at least it's interesting research.

“They’re coming for us you know.” Beltano’s tone was deceptively light, Daniela just snarled at him. Of course they were coming for them. Fascism was about order, about control, about making anyone who bucked the system by intent or by nature bleed for the audacity. They would not stop with her father and her brothers, wouldn’t stop until everything the family was or had been, good and bad, was ground to dust and the people under their protection brought to heel.

A week since she had taken the family and _forced_ them to listen with a loaded crossbow and flame orange eyes and a Mist new sworn at her back. A week consolidating her power base, and the news had been filtering in slowly, Don after Don, assassinated, arrested, executed, the ones not already dead had gone into hiding, and it was impossible to say how many of the old guard were still standing. Not many, Daniela suspected.

In a way it was a blessing, the old guard would not have followed her easily, too set in their ways, too proud of their own masculinity. More than half of the new guard were women themselves, and the ones that weren’t were too new and insecure in their positions to make much trouble. In some way it was a blessing, in some ways a curse, for what they gained in cohesion and unity, in leaders that didn’t baulk at her orders they lost in knowledge and experience. The new leaders were what was left after Mussolini’s thugs had left scorched earth behind them. Young and inexperienced, few of them even had the training of a Don, let alone any experience of command, and somehow, somehow she had to organise them to fight back, before the alliance itself was razed to the ground.

They had to hit back, hard and fast if she didn’t want the already low morale of the Vongola and allied families to crumble like sand. It would prove to the remainder of the old Dons that she had the strength and ruthlessness of a Vongola Sky, that she was worth following, it would prove to the new leaders that lack of experience didn’t mean they couldn’t do what was necessary.

She looked at her Mist again, he must have had a _reason_ to mention something she already knew. Bloody Mists, always had to approach a subject sideways. She thought she could guess what he wanted her to ask about though.

“We need to make a statement. They killed a Vongola Don. They can’t be allowed to think they can get away with that.” No direct questions, a week bonded and she already knew that direct questions would just drive him to deflect and evade.

“They’ll come for us, soon.” He repeated, with a smile that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a crocodile. “They’ll try to press their advantage, to crush us utterly while they have the momentum. It’s the nature of their ideology. They’ll leave their base exposed when they do.” And then the Vongola would strike. It was brilliant in its simplicity.

The shape of a plan, seeded by her Mist and shaped by the nudging of her own intuition, and the things she knew to be true, started to emerge.

…

The Vongola war council was struck silent when she announced her plan, when she gave them their orders. Her father would never have taken such measures. But then, her father was dead, and perhaps that was one of the reasons, he was too slow to think the unthinkable, and she was coming to realise, the unthinkable was all too often what warfare required.

Most of the council were horrified, would have argued if she hadn’t already terrified them into submission. Her father’s men, bound to tradition, clinging to symbols and possessions. She stared into each of their eyes in turn, daring them to make a comment, and in turn they all looked away unable to meet her burning orange gaze. All but one. Because as she looked into the eyes of the boss of the Varia she saw something completely different to the disquiet and submission of the rest of the family. When she looked into Ferrucio Suberbi’s eyes she saw interest, and just the beginnings of respect. The beginning stages of the dance that was Cloud courting.

…

Three teams, and she knew Beltrano wasn’t happy about being separated from her, but she needed him to run the assault on the enemy barracks while all the other available Mists covered for the evacuation. The barracks assault _needed_ the quick in and out infiltration skills of her Mist and she had to lead the main defence at the mansion. Not because her skills were necessarily needed, the Varia knew their work, they didn’t need her looking over their shoulders. But to prove she had the strength to fight this war, to lead the family and the alliance through this war intact, she had to be there.

Ferrucio took the intrusion uncharacteristically well for a Cloud, yet more evidence that the dance had begun, that he wanted to see her _play_. And she could feel his flames brushing against hers, testing always testing as they and their subordinates fought a running war through the corridors of the Vongola mansion, with traps and ambushes and every advantage that knowing the ground could offer them. She felt his flames flare when she put a bolt charged with Sky flames through the eye of the enemy captain and he propagated the traces of explosives he’d piggybacked on her shot to blow the man apart and take half of his squad with him. The Cloud propagation ability really was truly terrifying when used in combination with an explosives specialisation. He was almost as interesting to her as she seemed to be to him.

Then the watchers she’d set outside to monitor the enemy movements had given their signal, the last of the enemy attack force was inside, and it was time for the Vongola team to make their retreat.

Out one of the escape tunnels, three Lightnings to shield them from the blast, Daniela to weave their separate flames into a seamless shield, and Ferrucio’s Cloud flames flared together with a pair of Varia storms, so alike in flame and looks that they must have been brothers. And then the world caught fire. By the time the flames died down, the enemy forces were ash and charred bone, the Vongola mansion was a smoking shell, and the surrounding area was scoured to the bare blackened earth.

She was caught halfway between exhilaration at the success of her plan and grief at the loss of her childhood home, the place she’d grown up with her father and brothers. It had been no light sacrifice to make. It had to be done though. As long as Mussolini’s men knew where to find them they would stand no chance against him. The mansion was too obvious a target for them to do anything other than abandon it and she would be _damned_ if she left it intact for the enemy to use. No this was better, burn it to the ground and a fair number of the enemy with it, a fitting end for a building that had served the Vongola so long and loyally.

Her people were away now, the Vongola melted into a hundred farmsteads and family homes and mountain hideaways, difficult to find, impossible to pin down. The facists thought in straight lines, in terms of armies and open warfare, but she and hers were criminals, crooked to the bone, what use did they have for honourable warfare, when a guerrilla campaign could make their enemy _bleed._ And the gesture in itself was a powerful one, a sacrifice on that scale, it proved she was serious, that she was in this to the bitter end, and she wouldn’t take the escape that her gender offered her. The Vongola was _hers,_ its people were _hers,_ and she would _fight_ for them.

Her men were a little stunned, but unharmed, their disorientation as much a result of shock, as the force of the blast. The Sky and Lightning shield had held firm and the realisation of the sheer scale of the assault had more than one of them overwhelmed by a fit of hysterical laughter. She turned away from the smoking ruins to meet glowing violent eyes, impressed, and more than just interested. Harmony, flames flared and twisted together, and now she had a Cloud to match her Mist, utterly lethal, and made for war.

**Author's Note:**

> Meet Daniela's new Cloud. He's an explosives expert. And a Cloud. Propagating explosives. Think about it for a while.  
> The crossbow bolt with explosives attached is Daniela and Ferrucio's magic mafia flame adaptation on a type of ww1 crossbow that shot bombs instead of arrows.  
> And yes they did just blow up the Vongola mansion and go to ground. It had to be done. You can't run a guerrilla campaign if everyone knows where you live, and they were hardly going to leave it to be used as an enemy base.


End file.
